It's fascinating how this group of writers was to maintain its popularity for decades (within the last forty years, however, Queen and Gardner have faded).

In the British contingent we see an early sign of the coalescing of the four Crime Queens (the late Arthur Conan Doyle was the only British male writer included), while the Americans are a pretty traditional lot, with only Dashiell Hammett representing what would be the rapidly rising hard-boiled movement.

Of course it's important to remember this would have been a more highbrow sample than the norm (hence the appearance of Simenon). Perhaps most striking to me is not the absence of Raymond Chandler, who was new on the novel scene, but that of bestselling mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. Had the "literary world" begun to see her and the so-called HIBK ("Had I But Known") gang as old hat? Or was she, perhaps, a few rungs behind, somewhere in the top twenty?

For more on the "upholstered" mystery reading habits of early-forties readers see this post from earlier this month.

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About Me

Author of "Masters of the 'Humdrum' Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961"
"Magisterial"--Michael Dirda
"Edgar Committee, Mystery Writers of America, take note!"--Allen J. Hubin
"This should be a certain Edgar nominee"--Jon L. Breen, Mystery Scene
"Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing."
"Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene" (editor and contributor)
"The Spectrum of English Murder: The Detective Fiction of Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher and GDH and Margaret Cole"
and the Edgar-nominated "Murder in the Closet: Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall" (editor and contributor)